Donald Macleod explores Schubert's very final works, and the colossal hole he left in music after his premature death.

There are few composers whose genius is so fertile that you can make a whole week of programmes from a single year of their life. Yet even by Franz Schubert's remarkably prolific standards, his last 12 months were utterly extraordinary. As his body entered terminal decline through a mixture of alcoholism and syphilis, masterpiece upon masterpiece poured from his pen: the String Quintet in C, the delirious last three piano sonatas, his Mass in E flat, the last collection of lieder, posthumously titled "Swansong" - and many more besides. This week Donald Macleod takes us through the last year of Schubert's tragically foreshortened life and death at the age of only 31.

Donald Macleod ends this week exploring the final year of Schubert's life by exploring the immediate impact of his death upon 19th century musical circles. As well as completing the sequence of songs from Schubert's final collection, Schwanengesang, he presents a unique, remarkable "rendering" of the composer's incomplete Tenth Symphony by the modern Italian master Luciano Berio.

Schubert
Die Stadt (Schwanengesang)
Mark Padmore, tenor
Paul Lewis, piano

Piano Sonata in B flat, D960: II. Andante sostenuto
Mitsuko Uchida, piano

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D965
Ailish Tynan, soprano
Michael Collins, clarinet
Malcolm Martineau, piano

Berio/Schubert:
Rendering: II. Andante
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor

Schubert
Am Meer; Der Doppelgänger (Schwanengesang)
Mark Padmore, tenor
Paul Lewis, piano. Show less